Many types of financial transactions have risks associated therewith, including risks of fraud. For instance, a financial transaction that involves the use of a credit card to pay for particular goods or services runs the risk that the credit card being used is unauthorized. When the credit card is used, an authorization process is performed by, for instance, the financial institution or other processing center that issued the credit card to determine if the use is authorized. If the use is authorized, the financial transaction successfully completes. Otherwise, the transaction fails.
The authorization process, however, is not perfect. Payment may be approved even if use of the card is unauthorized. Therefore, financial institutions are constantly enhancing their ability to detect fraud. They are deploying ever increasingly sophisticated computer techniques and complex fraud detection rule sets to detect fraud.